


A Trip to the Ocean

by eirtae



Series: The Kosta Family Drama [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Original Characters - Freeform, not quite a heist, ordinary people in the Star Wars universe, rural life, supporting protagonist, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23502703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirtae/pseuds/eirtae
Summary: Freedom is at hand! The Empire is on the defensive, the Rebel Alliance is advancing across all sectors, and Lee Kosta, age sixteen, is in need of a speeder. Thirty-two hours after the end of his probation, and that need has never been so apparent - instead of a celebratory makeout with the boy from one town over, Lee accepted an invitation to go on a celebratory spice trip out on the beach, and the hallucinations are taking a turn for the worse…
Series: The Kosta Family Drama [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678558
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Updates Sundays.

His alarm was going off.

His alarm was going off, and it was still dark, which meant that he’d set something wrong.

His alarm was going off, and he ignored it, knowing that after three minutes of suffering, it would shut the fuck up anyway.

Slowly, slowly, slowly it permeated into his consciousness that it wasn’t his alarm. It was his comm, the custom tone Lee had set for him while he was drunk and hadn’t been able to fix since filling his room with an obnoxious chirping throb.

Dahl turned his head to check the time on the bedside table; at Oh-Four, Lee was either calling while drunk to tell him something stupid, or was in trouble. If it was the first, he was going to kill him. If it was the second, he was still going to kill him.

With a sigh he reached out to his comm and flicked on the sound without otherwise moving away from where he was lying on his front, grunting to let Lee know he’d answered.

“Don’t tell our parents,” said Lee, the whispered words shaky with panic.

“What?” asked Dahl, mumbling into his pillow. “Why would I tell our parents anything?”

“I died,” replied Lee, his whisper so low Dahl could hardly hear it.

“You - what?” said Dahl, holding the comm slightly closer to his ear and blinking himself properly awake.

“I took something and it was fun and then I died,” explained Lee, the panic starting to rise.

“Hey hey hey,” said Dahl, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible as he started to sit up. “It’s alright, you’re alright.”

“But I died,” insisted Lee.

“Would you be talking to me if you were dead?” asked Dahl, trying to remember what he’d been told about dealing with people who were tripping.

“I dunno,” replied Lee, the panic still present. “Maybe.”

“Well, _I’m definitely alive_ ,” said Dahl as he stood, comm pressed to his ear using his shoulder, “and so are you. You just took something nasty, that’s all.”

“I did take something,” echoed Lee, some of the panic in his whispering voice easing.

“So you’re gonna be fine,” replied Dahl, digging around in his laundry on the floor to find the nearest complete set of clothes. “You’ve just gotta wait it out. Are you out at the beach?”

“I think I did a thing and Ahn freaked out so I ran,” said Lee, voice still shaky.

“Toward the speeders, or away from the speeders?” asked Dahl, hoping against hope that the answer was the first.

“Um,” said Lee uncertainly, pausing to take several deep, shaky breaths. “Toward? I think? I wanted you and forgot about comms, so…”

Dahl snorted a laugh before he could stop himself, and Lee responded with a relieved sigh, muttering something Dahl couldn’t quite make out.

“Are you gonna be alright while I’m driving to get you?” asked Dahl as he started to pull on his pants.

“You’re coming to get me?” repeated Lee, his tone surprised and hopeful, his volume rising to an almost normal level.

“I mean… that’s why you commed, right?” replied Dahl - the surprise stung.

“I needed to let you know I was dead,” explained Lee. He sighed out all his breath, and when he spoke again the shakiness wasn’t quite so present. “If you’re coming to get me, I think I really am alive.”

“ _This_ is what convinced you,” laughed Dahl, the sting whisked away by the absurd thoughtfulness of Lee needing to let him know about his own death.

“It _hurt_ ,” replied Lee, his voice once again sinking down to a wavering whisper. He sounded wounded, and when he sniffed Dahl realized that the shakiness was just as likely to be from crying as from fear.

“You said the early parts were fun?” prompted Dahl as he began to button up his shirt, attempting to distract Lee from the experience of dying.

“Yeah,” agreed Lee, his voice watery on top of being a whisper. He coughed and sniffed, and when he spoke again, his voice was a little stronger. “I um… the sky had all these colours even though it was sorta black, and the stars got really close.” He paused. “They’re still close. Like they’re dipping in the ocean.” There was another pause. “Still can’t quite touch them, though.” He sighed with disappointment. “And I can feel all the sand,” he added as an afterthought.

“... You’re on a beach,” observed Dahl, his own voice lowering to a whisper as he carefully stepped through his door and began the familiar process of sneaking down the hall.

“ _All_ of the sand,” repeated Lee with awe. “All of it. At once.”

Dahl hummed an acknowledgement - it sounded deeply unpleasant, but pointing that out to Lee seemed like a bad idea.

“Did you feel all the sand when you tripped?” asked Lee.

“Nah,” replied Dahl once he was out the front door. “I don’t think what I took was as strong as what you did.”

“You didn’t die,” said Lee, still fixated on his death. 

“Neither did you,” Dahl reminded him as he settled himself into his speeder.

“You just got really into birds,” continued Lee, laughing harder than the comment really justified.

“I did,” agreed Dahl, smiling even through his annoyance. He’d spent at least two hours recounting the previous day for Lee when he’d gotten home, no longer high but still feeling light headed. It was nice to know Lee remembered what he’d been told. 

His response earned more laughter, and Dahl let Lee wear himself out, holding his hands under the warm air of the nearest vent.

“Alright,” said Dahl once Lee was panting instead of laughing. “Just hang tight somewhere that I can see you, I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Okay,” agreed Lee, the sound of him moving in the sand making it through the line. “Okay.”

Dahl turned off the comm, turned on his music, and began to drive toward the grey of early dawn.

He’d deliberately overestimated the amount of time it would take, and was there in just under fifteen, skimming where the sand met the water so that he could easily see the coast. Lee didn’t take long to find - he was sprawled right at the edge of the water, the waves rising over his bare feet so that his pants were wet up to the knees, his hands lying on the sand on either side of his head.

Dahl sighed at the sight of him, parking the speeder several meters away and making a point to leave the headlights on so that he could see Lee when he got out.

“Lost your shoes, did you?” he called as he pushed the door shut and looked down at his brother.

Lee looked back up without rising from the sand, and Dahl’s teasing died on his lips - sand was drying in his hair and on his half-unbuttoned shirt, his brown eyes still fearful, face covered in tears.

“Yeah,” admitted Lee, voice wobbling as he rubbed his forearm across his face in a poor attempt to clean it. “And I left my socks.”

“Ahn’ll bring them around later,” said Dahl, offering a hand as Lee awkwardly tried to push himself to sitting with one hand while the other kept smearing sand across his cheeks. It was uncomfortable to watch; Lee was a lot of things, but _vulnerable_ wasn’t supposed to be on the list.

“I really scared her,” replied Lee, failing to even notice Dahl’s hand, eyes shut against the grit on his face.

“Sounds like you’re not the only one having a bad trip,” said Dahl, not quite managing a smile.

Lee laughed and sniffed and laughed again.

“C’mon,” said Dahl, and this time when he reached out he caught Lee under one arm to haul him to his feet, letting him lean against him heavily. “Let’s get you home.”

“We can’t go too high,” Lee informed him as Dahl helped him to the passenger side door. “The stars are still too close.”

“You’re just tripping,” Dahl reminded him.

“Mhm,” agreed Lee as Dahl nudged him down into his seat. “Still too close.”

“I’ll keep it low,” Dahl conceded - _anything_ to keep Lee from crying again. The Empire required that speeders stay within one metre of the ground at night anyway. 

Lee hummed, staring at the dashboard and pulling his feet up onto the seat so he could sit with his knees pinning his hands against his chest. He was getting sand all over the seat, and Dahl made a note of it so that he could be annoyed later. For now he just felt bad that he hadn’t thought to bring a blanket.

“Dahl,” whispered Lee into the near-silence of the music three minutes later, “can drugs give you magic powers?”

Dahl barked out a laugh, accidentally pressing on the accelerator hard enough that the speeder jumped forward.

"Sorry," he said after glancing at Lee's frowning face. "It's just - you're still _really_ tripping."

"I'm serious," muttered Lee, sliding down in the seat to sulk.

"No," replied Dahl, "drugs can't give you magic powers."

Lee hummed noncommittally, and Dahl decided that there wasn't much point in arguing - they'd laugh about it the next day when Lee was sober.

The rest of the drive passed in quiet, the music doing its job and keeping Dahl awake while he drove, and by the time they arrived outside their family's house, the dawn behind them was nearly breaking. 

Dahl sighed deeply and let his head fall back against the seat as he turned the speeder off. There was no response from Lee, and Dahl looked over to find him curled in on himself even tighter. His eyes were focused on the dashboard in front of him, but didn't seem to really be seeing it, hands clutching at his chest like he was trying to hold in his heart.

"Lee?" asked Dahl with concern, leaning forward to put himself further into Lee's sightline.

Lee blinked several times before looking up, eyes wide.

"You really didn't die," Dahl reassured.

"Yeah," mumbled Lee, taking more comfort from the reassurance than Dahl would have liked.

“Don’t forget about the step in the hall,” Dahl reminded him before pushing himself out of his seat.

“It was _your_ fault the last time we -” began Lee with annoyance, the words cut off by the _smack_ of Dahl shutting the driver’s side door.

Dahl was up the front steps by the time Lee had struggled his way out of the speeder, and grinned back at Lee’s scowl. Lee slammed the speeder door after himself, jumping at the noise like he wasn’t expecting it. He glanced around and then back over his shoulder, sighing when he realized what had happened.

“Step,” said Dahl as he watched Lee cautiously walk up to the door with his hands held slightly out at either side to balance himself. “Don’t forget.”

“Asshole,” grumbled Lee.

They made it through the house without incident, Lee taking the step in the hall with undue caution, shooting Dahl dirty looks the entire time. At the door to Dahl’s bedroom, Lee hesitated before walking past - they’d shared it until Shan moved out a year ago.

“There’s still a blanket on the top bunk,” admitted Dahl with a sigh, voice kept soft.

Lee’s posture eased, and Dahl rolled his eyes at the mildly exaggerated relief as he led the way through the door.

Once inside he turned away to begin changing back into his sleep clothes, assuming that Lee would do the same. Instead he heard Lee briefly moving and then sighing deeply, and turned to find him curled on the laundry on the floor, wrapped still damp and sandy in the blanket pulled from the top bunk.

“That laundry was clean,” hissed Dahl.

“It’s not clean if it’s on the floor,” Lee mumbled, sniffing as he used the blanket to rub sand off the bridge of his nose.

Dahl opened his mouth to accuse Lee of hypocrisy, but just huffed instead. Lee wasn’t any _neater_ now that he had his own space, but it was also true that clean laundry lived on his dresser instead of on the floor and dirty laundry consistently went in the hamper. Looking into Lee’s room had a tendency to make Dahl feel guilty for inflicting his mess on his brother for years on the assumption that they had the same standards.

“You’re putting it through the sonic,” Dahl snapped.

Lee mumbled something that Dahl couldn’t quite make out, and he chose to interpret it as acceptance.

Several moments later the lights were off and he was under his blankets staring at his clock as it moved minute by minute towards Oh Five. He was supposed to be up and in the shop with his father by half past Oh Seven. He was going to _kill_ Lee once he was sober.

There came a sound from the floor followed by the feeling of the mattress sinking, and Dahl was immediately sitting up and shoving Lee away.

“What the _hell_ ,” he hissed into the dark in the general direction of Lee.

“I need to be able to feel you breathing,” whispered Lee, the fear back in his voice. 

“ _Why_ ,” snarled Dahl.

“So I know we’re both alive,” Lee replied, the last word trailing off into awkward silence.

“Can’t you just listen for it?” asked Dahl after a pause - it was hard to hold it against Lee when he was so shaken.

“I can’t hear you over the cat,” said Lee. He sighed deeply. “It’s a lot more annoying here than on the beach.”

“The cat - _it’s not real_ ,” Dahl reminded him with frustration.

“Yeah,” agreed Lee, “but I can still hear it.”

Dahl groaned as he considered his answer before making room for Lee in the bed - and was immediately scrambling to keep Lee from crawling under the blanket.

“You’ve got your own,” he hissed.

“But -”

“You’re fucking _covered_ in sand,” Dahl added, defensively wrapping his blanket around himself tight.

“Fiiiiine,” sighed Lee, collapsing into the space Dahl had left for him.

He settled himself in so that they were lying back to back the way they had when they were small before their father had built the bunk, and the familiar feeling had Dahl swiftly drifting off. 

Two hours later Dahl was climbing over Lee to get to his alarm, his hand repeatedly waving through the holo but missing the button to turn it off. The process led to him falling to the floor and into the pile of laundry, cursing as he went and earning himself the sound of Fain smacking the other side of the wall they shared to express her displeasure.

“Fuck off,” Dahl muttered, glaring at the wall like Fain might be able to feel the hostility through it. “And fuck you,” he added, looking over his shoulder at where Lee was still lying in the bed.

He got no response - Lee hadn’t moved in the slightest despite Dahl’s climb over him, his brow slightly furrowed even in his sleep.

Dahl frowned at the off-putting lack of response, but decided against waking Lee; sleep was likely what he needed most after his trip.

Aside from falling off the bed, the rest of his morning went as usual - getting dressed, eating breakfast with his parents, driving to the shop separately from his father so that he could get to the single class he was still taking at the school. It was disappointing but unsurprising that Lee wasn’t at the school to say hello to before his class. He’d probably looked terrible enough that their mother would suggest that he stay home instead of him having to fight for it.

Hopefully she hadn’t noticed the sand.

In the evening after the second part of his work day, he arrived home to find that Lee had relocated to his own bedroom. He didn’t respond when Dahl knocked, and so he assumed he was asleep.

Lee did respond to their mother’s far more aggressive knock half an hour later, coming out to sit exhausted and withdrawn over supper. The difference in volume at the table was startling - without Lee’s verbal prodding their younger brother Kuo remained sullen, their father stayed quiet, and Dahl didn’t have anything to add to the conversation between Fain and their mother.

Once released from the supper table, Lee immediately headed for the hall and his room without so much as a glance in Dahl's direction. Dahl followed twenty seconds later, following their standard procedure to keep from tipping Fain off to their conversation being important.

Lee was waiting as expected next to Dahl's bedroom door, but instead of his usual excitement, he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and eyes on the floor. He glanced up when Dahl approached, eyes haunted.

"What did I tell you about what happened?" asked Lee after a quick, paranoid survey of the hall for Fain.

"That you died," started Dahl - he'd started the sentence with a smile, but Lee flinched, and Dahl felt his smile fade.

"Yeah," muttered Lee, eyes briefly back on the floor. "That sucked. What about Ahn?"

Dahl's eyes narrowed. "You didn't try to ask her out while you were tripping, did you?"

Lee gave him the deeply unimpressed look he reserved for when Dahl suggested he might have committed a social mistake with a girl, and Dahl laughed.

"You just said that you freaked her out," explained Dahl.

"Right," murmured Lee.

"Did she not bring your shoes back?" asked Dahl with concern - Ahn liked Lee, but she could be temperamental, and good shoes were expensive.

"She did," replied Lee with a shrug. His voice went flat and annoyed. "She said next time we should do it in a place with furniture."

"Are you gonna do it again?" asked Dahl, careful to keep his tone neutral. Mentions of furniture were a clear sign of Ahn's intent; whatever Lee had done must not have left much of an impression.

"Nah," dismissed Lee. "I'd rather not die again unless I have to."

"That's fair," replied Dahl, mental images of Lee's fear from the night before welling up over the sexual politics of the situation.

Lee seemed to be having the same moment, eyes fixed on the floor.

"D'you... want to talk about it?" asked Dahl after a hesitation, his curiosity about what had happened conquering the uneasy feeling that it might require him to acknowledge that Lee'd been so afraid and hurt he'd cried.

"No," said Lee, the word coming out so fast that it very nearly overlapped with Dahl's question.

He immediately shifted uncomfortably on his feet, opening his mouth to say something else - and Fain appeared at the end of the hall, shouting at them for leaving her _alone_ to do _cleaning_ with _Kuo_.

Dahl didn't get any more information until the next evening - Lee failed to appear at breakfast and managed to skip out on school for a second day in a row, a comforting return to his usual behaviour.

Another comforting return to his usual behaviour was far more grating: the second Dahl stepped through the front door Lee was dragging him through the house to his bedroom. He locked the door behind him, checked that the window was shut and collapsed cross legged on his bed, staring at Dahl with the full expectation that he would sit.

Dahl sighed and then did so, preparing himself for whatever stupidity Lee was about to propose.

"Remember when I asked if drugs can give you magic powers?" asked Lee, his expression deadly serious.

"They can't," confirmed Dahl instead of asking why Lee would bring it up.

Instead of responding with words, Lee opened one hand and gently tossed several screws into the air - where they stayed floating at eye level.

Without any hesitation Dahl reached out and swatted the screws out of the air and across the floor. Lee watched them go and then summoned them back to his hand with a flick of his wrist before tossing them back into the air.

Dahl swatted them back down into his hand. "Drugs can't give you magic powers," he hissed for lack of anything intelligent to say.

"I don't think they did," replied Lee, the words coming out in a fearful whisper that was painfully similar to the tone he'd used when talking over the comm. "I think I've always had them, I just didn't notice."

"What?" asked Dahl. "How did you _not notice_ you had magic powers?"

"What kind of weirdo goes around trying to lift things with their mind when they aren't high off their ass?" countered Lee, palm up and the screws once again casually _floating in mid-fucking-air_.

"Kuo," replied Dahl, swatting the screws away so that they hit the wall and bounced on the bed.

"That doesn't count," dismissed Lee, reaching out to pick up the screws like a normal person and then making them skitter over the blanket towards him without touching them instead.

" _Why_ ," snarled Dahl as he pinned the screws to the bed to make them stop offending the laws of physics, "does he not count?"

"Being weird is basically his job," shrugged Lee, wiggling his fingers so that the screws began to squirm under Dahl's palm.

" _Would you stop that_ ," hissed Dahl, pressing the screws down into the mattress to make them stop moving.

For once in his life Lee obeyed, his wiggling fingers stilling, his hand slowly sinking down to rest against his ankle.

They stared at each other as the implications truly sank into Dahl's understanding - the only answer he could think of for magic powers involved things like _Jedi traitors_ and _Vader_. Despite his flippant use of his powers, Lee's tense shoulders, wide eyes, and uncharacteristic fidgeting betrayed real, genuine fear.

"So..." said Dahl slowly, "is this... like those holos they used to show in school about... you know..."

"I mean..." replied Lee, just as hesitant, eyes flickering to the door and then the window. "It makes sense..."

"You can't use them," said Dahl, hoping against hope that Lee would take him seriously.

"I already do," replied Lee, guilt making him curl his shoulders in. "Without meaning to, I think."

"No," said Dahl, desperately shaking his head. "That doesn't make sense."

"Like how I didn't have to learn anything to always know where something is wrong in a speeder," said Lee, "or how fast I can pick locks, or -"

"That time we got lost in the fog out on the water and you still knew how to get us home," Dahl offered, his breath going short. "Or how you always get the right tool out of the bag on the first try."

Lee nodded, and the two of them once again fell silent.

"What do we do?" asked Dahl, his voice barely a whisper.

"I dunno," replied Lee, his posture sagging.

"I mean... nothing's happened so far," said Dahl, voice uncertain.

"I died," Lee reminded him, a waver in his voice.

"You were tripping," replied Dahl firmly.

"This was real," said Lee, gesturing with one hand so that the screws still under Dahl's palm jumped.

"Just because one thing was real doesn't mean it was all real," Dahl insisted, snatching his hand back from the screws.

"It _felt_ real," said Lee, scratching at his chest where two nights before he'd been holding an imaginary wound.

"Don't try to tell me you didn't find the strongest shit you could," said Dahl, voice dry and eyebrows raised.

"Point," admitted Lee without shame.

"So I guess... we just pretend it didn't happen," Dahl suggested after a pause.

Lee stared down at the screws and chewed on his lip - there was no way he was going to be satisfied with the non-solution.

"Lee," said Dahl, waiting until Lee glanced up to continue speaking, "you can't use these powers more than you already do."

"Just another thing to fake," muttered Lee with resentment, eyes cast away.

"Do you _want_ to get shot or shipped off to Vader?" asked Dahl, frustrated in the face of Lee's resentment.

"No," replied Lee with an annoyed sigh. "It'll just... it's easier to lie about a thing you're really doing than it is to fence around a thing you're _almost_ doing."

"It's not like you'll have to lie around me," Dahl reminded him.

Lee's expression when he looked up was a strange one - a little bit caught out, a little bit relieved, a tiny flash of hurt so small Dahl thought he might have imagined it. It was uncomfortable to be unable to tell what Lee was thinking.

"I guess that's true," replied Lee before Dahl could ask, a smile finally crossing his face. Then he took a deep breath and rolled himself off the edge of the bed to land on his feet. "Think I can use it to figure out what's wrong with that piece of shit dad's got in the garage?" he asked, the semi-enthusiastic return to his favourite topic a firm dismissal of the previous conversation.

"I mean, it's worth a try," said Dahl with a shrug, pushing himself off the bed to follow Lee out into the hall. He’d have to ask later; it was impossible to make Lee do anything he didn’t want to do, and he was already chattering about some of his theories for why the speeder’s coils weren’t properly venting.

Dahl was silently thankful that when his mother caught sight of them on their way through the kitchen she drafted them into helping with supper. He'd already spent the entire work day staring into the guts of a speeder without having to think about Lee using _magic_ , and a bit of normalcy after their conversation was welcome.

For the entire week Lee's favourite topic was the Force.

They'd spent the evening after their first conversation trying to remember what it was called from the education holos from when they were kids. Dahl had spent the next watching Lee show off the things he'd managed to fix, listening to him muse about what he'd done in the past that might have been the Force, and might have just been skill. Another discussing the difference between the Force and sheer luck. The next was spent talking about Vader - where he'd been, what he'd done - until Dahl had gotten too uncomfortable with Lee's morbid fascination and made him stop.

Tonight wasn't the same topic, but it was close.

"So what do you think is the difference between the Force sensitive people they just shoot, and the ones who get taken to Vader?" asked Lee from where he was lying on his back on the work table in the garage, lazily throwing a handball in the air so that it almost grazed the ceiling and then catching it.

"They'd just shoot you," replied Dahl, doing his best to keep his annoyance out of his voice as he glanced over from where he was trying to reach one of the bolts deep in the speeder's engine.

"Yeah," agreed Lee with another toss, his dark eyes focused upward at nothing. "But what if they didn't?" He caught the ball. "Do you think there's like... a school for evil Force users?"

"You don't have the grades for that," replied Dahl - they both knew the state of Lee's grades was _absolutely_ for lack of trying.

Lee laughed, tossing the ball. "Maybe I'll have to start putting some effort in," he joked.

"Better evil wizard school than getting shot I guess," observed Dahl, his tool finally catching on the bolt.

"They'd probably just shoot me," Lee reminded him.

"Especially since you've got that record," said Dahl.

"I didn't do it," replied Lee, glaring over with the ball held in the tips of his fingers, pausing just before he tossed it up.

"I know," replied Dahl with a sigh. "If it'd been _your_ plan, you wouldn't have gotten caught. But you still let everyone think you did it."

"Maybe having a record would work in my favour," said Lee, changing the topic away from the usual argument about his shitty friends and their parent's inability to afford a lawyer and avoiding Imperial level courts. "It's _evil_ wizard school."

"There's no way there's an evil wizard school," said Dahl, allowing the topic change to move by smoothly.

"So Vader just keeps random Force users in stasis until he needs them for something?" suggested Lee, back to staring at the ceiling and throwing the ball.

"He probably just tortures them for information," countered Dahl, grunting as he finally managed to turn the bolt at the odd angle. "You know, that whole thing about hating Jedi."

"I thought he managed to kill all the Jedi," replied Lee, the tone of his voice some combination of disbelieving and curious.

"Which means there's no evil wizard school and they'd just shoot you," said Dahl, deciding against mentioning the rumours he'd heard whispered in the shop.

"But there's other Force users out there," said Lee. "Maybe he teaches the ones who join him to hunt down the ones who don't."

"Don't you think they'd have mentioned it in the education holos if he had some kind of Jedi hunting team?" asked Dahl, standing away from the speeder's engine and using the rag draped over his shoulder to wipe grease off the part he'd freed.

"I wouldn't mention it if it was me," said Lee. "That'd be admitting I wasn't in control of the situation."

Dahl looked up from what he was doing, his hands continuing to move on the part. "It's a little concerning how well you'd do at evil wizard school," he said after a pause to watch Lee use the Force to bounce the ball back into the air with a lazy flick of his finger instead of catching it.

"Y'think so?" asked Lee, glancing over with a smile before catching the ball. He'd probably thought Dahl wasn't looking when he'd used the Force, and Dahl's stomach flipped.

"Yeah," said Dahl, "but if it was an apprenticeship system you'd be fucked," he added, thinking about how relaxed working on the speeder with Lee was compared to the pressure of his father's supervision at the shop.

"Why's that?" asked Lee, frowning as he caught the ball and held it.

"Harder to get away with ignoring the rules," laughed Dahl.

"I dunno," said Lee, chewing at his lip. "Following rules wouldn't be so bad if they were hot."

Dahl barked out a laugh, putting the rag back over his shoulder to inspect the part up close. "Definitely no apprenticing to Vader, then."

"We don't know what's under that helmet," Lee pointed out.

"Pretty sure it's not X’tina Alugera under there," countered Dahl.

Lee didn't laugh - he didn't respond at all, and Dahl looked up to find Lee's eyes narrowed as he stared at the ceiling, ball in hand as he gestured like he was tapping on something while he thought.

"No," said Dahl as Lee pushed himself up on one elbow to look at Dahl, dropping the ball unceremoniously on the floor, a grin on his face and excitement in his eyes.

"How would you like to steal a speeder from the ocean?”


	2. Chapter 2

"How would you like to steal a speeder from the ocean?” asked Lee, a grin on his face and excitement lighting up his eyes.

"... Are you talking about the VL-59 that got sunk out off the cliffs?" asked Dahl after a long pause to parse what Lee'd asked.

"If I can use the Force to lift it enough to get a strap under it, we can winch it out," replied Lee, propping himself up on one hand and swinging his legs off the table so that he was sitting on its edge.

"The cable on my boat isn't long enough for that," replied Dahl, already too curious about Lee's solutions to tell him no a second time.

"It'll be long enough at low tide," said Lee.

Dahl blanched. "Low tide is at Oh-Three Hundred!"

"Yeah," replied Lee brightly, smiling like he hadn't just proposed risking their lives by breaking the Imperial curfew on ocean access. "That'll lower the water pressure the winch and I'll have to fight and make my swim down shorter, too."

"You're gonna swim down there in the _dark?_ " asked Dahl incredulously.

"I've got a darkvision attachment for my rebreather I've been meaning to install," said Lee, hopping down from the table and bounding across the garage floor to open one of the lower cupboards.

"Your rebreather is a piece of shit," countered Dahl as he watched him begin digging to the back of the cupboard.

"So it'll be a piece of shit with Imperial class darkvision," replied Lee with a shrug before making a noise of success.

"Where'd you -" Dahl decided after he'd already started speaking that he didn't want to know - "what about the Stormtrooper patrols?"

"I've had a holorecorder jammed into the cliff out there for years," said Lee, withdrawing from the cupboard and standing with his rebreather and goggles in hand. "If I ask politely and whistle a bit, I bet I can get Ee-Bee to run an analysis to find the biggest patrol gap closest to low tide."

"You're gonna make that droid do something for you by whistling," said Dahl slowly - the last time he'd _looked_ at the junkyard droid, he'd gotten a shock for his trouble.

"And asking politely," Lee reminded him absently, focused on fiddling with something on the side of the goggles.

"How long have you been thinking about this?" asked Dahl after a pause to watch as Lee wandered over to the work table, eyes still on the goggles.

"Pretty much since Uncle Nai took us out there to prove it was real," replied Lee - their uncle had taken them out when Lee was seven and Dahl was eight. "It's something to think about when I'm bored."

"... That's why you got dad to let us dive down to look at it when you were eleven," said Dahl after a pause to think.

"Yep," replied Lee. "I wanted to know if it would start if we dragged it out, and it will."

"There's no way you can know that," objected Dahl. "It's half covered in sand."

"But it felt like it would run," said Lee, smiling when he looked over his shoulder. "Which would be the Force, right?"

Dahl took a breath to tell him that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, remembered that the day before he'd watched Lee know exactly where to fix something deep in a speeder's engine after staring at the closed hood for ten minutes, and sighed instead. "Our parents never should have taken your speeder bike away," he muttered. 

"Nope," agreed Lee, hopping back up onto the work table to sit without looking away from the goggles. "They definitely shouldn't have."

Dahl watched his brother work in silence, arms crossed, mulling the plan over. Even without the details, it seemed… _plausible._ Which was how Lee generally functioned when he was bored - which was almost always - spending his time thinking up clever ways to make things that were _plausible_ into _facts._

He hovered on the very edge of saying yes, and concluded that the consequences he couldn’t quite bring himself to examine in detail weren’t worth it.

“I’ll do it without you if I have to,” said Lee just as Dahl went to tell him no. He turned to look at him, leaving the goggles on the work table. “But nobody is as good on the water as you, and nobody’s boat is as sturdy.”

“You’re bluffing,” replied Dahl after a pause to narrow his eyes at Lee.

“Am I?” asked Lee, leaning against the work table and giving Dahl his most winning - and most irritating - smile.

“Definitely,” said Dahl with as much confidence as he could summon despite the fact that he knew that Lee definitely _wasn’t._

“People will be telling stories about us for years,” Lee pointed out. 

“They’ll be telling stories if we fuck it up, too,” said Dahl.

Lee paused, then smirked. “It’s the kind of story that’ll get you laid,” he drawled.

Dahl chewed on the inside of his cheek as visions of one of the girls from across the provincial line sprang to mind, her entertained but dismissive look, the way she wasn’t impressed with him but also wasn’t hostile. She was all slim curves and nipples showing just a little through her shirt, straight black hair falling to just above her perfect ass when she shook it from her braid, her mild disdain for him melting into giggles when she was drunk on the other side of the fire with her friends.

"... Fine," he muttered after a pause to fight and spectacularly fail to conquer his dick.

“Perfect,” said Lee with a grin, bouncing back around to working on his goggles and rebreather as he began to go over the details of the potential plan out loud.

Dahl sighed, wandering to the other side of the room to collect a large sheet of flimsi out of one of the cupboards. _Lee_ might be able to keep track of everything in his head, but Dahl knew from experience that he couldn’t - they’d have to destroy the flimsi afterwards to get rid of the evidence, but he needed to see it laid out once.

Lee laughed when Dahl shoved a stylus in front of his face, taking it and restarting his explanation from the top, the two of them falling into the familiar pattern of Lee throwing out ideas and Dahl helping to walk them back into something they could actually manage.

It was two and a half solid weeks of back and forth between them before they were ready. Lee got Ee-Bee to run the analysis. Dahl spent some of his savings upgrading the winch of his boat once the enthusiasm really hit. They practiced Lee’s dive and Dahl’s pull from the boat while they were supposed to be checking the thymops traps until their timing was perfect. Dahl repeatedly pointed out holes in Lee’s plan, and together they filled them. Lee spent time in the garage just staring at progressively larger objects, managing to lift them just far enough off the ground with his mind that he could work his fingers underneath.

Every time it made the hair on the back of Dahl’s neck stand up, and every time he reminded himself of the girl from out of town (and her tits, and her smile, and her - ) to steel his nerve.

Three days before the proper outing they did a test run during the day long before the Imperial curfew on the water took effect, Lee diving down to touch the hood of the speeder and coming back ecstatic. In the moment Dahl was right there with him in his excitement, but for the next two nights all he could think about was whether the patrols would find his boat hidden in a crevasse along the cliffs and whether Lee was going to drown and whether -

At Oh-One and and thirty on the night of the operation, he stepped silently out into the hall to find Lee already waiting for him. He couldn't tell in the dark if Lee was smiling, but he could see the way that Lee's silhouette on silent feet snuck down the hall the second Dahl was with him. Dahl grinned to himself and followed, allowing Lee's confidence to calm his jitters.

As usual they made their way through the living room to the inside door to the garage - and the entire plan was derailed by the quiet sound of his little brother speaking from the couch.

"Lee?" he asked, sleepiness thick on his voice.

Lee stopped short and Dahl walked into him, cursing softly first at one brother and then the other.

"Yeah?" asked Lee, enough caution in his voice to make Dahl roll his eyes. 

There was the sound of Kuo scrambling for his glasses on the caf table, fully awake the second that Lee responded. They both flinched when Kuo turned on the nearest lamp - thankfully he wasn't stupid enough to turn it up past the lowest setting.

"Is this about diving for the speeder?" asked Kuo with interest, leaning towards them over the arm of the couch. 

"You told him what we were doing?" hissed Dahl, ignoring Kuo in favour of glaring at Lee.

"No," replied Lee, shoulders tensed defensively.

"I guessed," explained Kuo, speaking fast in his enthusiasm but dutifully keeping his voice low. "He gave me one of those tiny pearls that come from seaweed, he found it on one of his -"

"He's gonna snitch on us," said Dahl, his hiss rising in volume.

Lee rolled his eyes, always always _always_ assuming the best about Kuo no matter what. "He's not gonna -"

"He tells on Fain _all the time,_ " said Dahl, strangling down his voice.

"Fain lies," insisted Lee, dismissing Dahl’s concern with a vague wave of his hand. "And we don't have time for -"

"I could," interrupted Kuo, his eyes narrowed and the two words spoken with more spite than Dahl had realized he was capable of.

There was a long pause as both Dahl and Lee stared at their younger brother. For once in his life the girly little shit was displaying a spine, doing his best to keep his expression fierce, shifting uncomfortably on his knees the longer they stared.

"You wouldn't," breathed Dahl as he tried to decide how much of Lee's anger he was willing to risk in punishing Kuo's ill-timed courage.

"But -" Kuo's voice failed and he swallowed. "But I could."

"If you -" Dahl began, his temper rising.

"What do you want?" asked Lee - it was rare that Dahl saw Lee jump to bargaining instead of threats, and giving in to Kuo this easily was _absurd._

"What do I..." Kuo blinked stupidly for just long enough that Dahl wanted to shake him. "I want you to drive me wherever I want," he blurted.

"Deal," said Lee without hesitation.

" _What?_ " asked Dahl, gaping at Lee in horror.

"To school," continued Kuo like he hadn't heard Lee, "and back from school, and to... to friends... and -"

"Deal," repeated Lee, ignoring Dahl entirely.

"Really?" asked Kuo, eyes wide and voice hopeful. Half a second later and he was starting to look pleased with himself - Lee had set a bad, _bad_ precedent.

"Can we go now?" asked Lee, wildly impatient but inexplicably not angry.

"Promise?" Kuo insisted, offering out a pinky like he was still fucking _five._

Lee grinned when he saw the gesture, stepping forward and linking their pinkies. It swiftly became clear from the way they shook their linked hands and stifled laughter that Lee wasn’t just indulging Kuo - they had some kind of inside joke that Dahl wasn’t a part of.

“Are you done?” asked Dahl after silently counting to three.

Lee moved in response to the prompt, but didn't reply to Dahl; instead he let go of Kuo's pinky and shoved him backwards. Kuo just barely managed to stifle his yelp on his way down onto the couch, the soft noise just loud enough to make Dahl flinch.

"Don't read too late," Lee whispered as he started to make his way for the door to the garage.

Kuo grumbled something, but Dahl had no idea what it was, following Lee and glaring at him while they collected their gear. Lee ignored the glare as usual, moving as efficiently as ever on their way out the second door and toward Dahl's speeder.

"That was stupid," Dahl announced the second it was safe to speak - despite his annoyance, he didn't slow down in the process of opening the trunk.

"Why?" asked Lee as he deposited the first bag of gear into the back of the speeder.

"Anywhere he wants?" asked Dahl, slamming the trunk's lid down the moment Lee had the second bag in the back. " _Really?_ "

"Dahl," said Lee, turning and holding onto Dahl's upper arms. "I need you to listen to me very carefully."

Dahl set his jaw, but stayed silent.

"Kuo," said Lee slowly, eyes steady, "is a fucking loser."

Dahl barked out a laugh.

"He has no friends," Lee continued, still absolutely deadpan in expression. "He doesn't go anywhere, he reads articles about decorating shit _for fun,_ " he gently shook Dahl's shoulders for emphasis.

"Fuck," muttered Dahl through his smile. He hadn't realized that Kuo was _that_ bad.

"In the three months of my probation he went out in the evening _twice,_ and it was for groceries with mom when Fain was busy," Lee finished, letting go of Dahl's arms. "This is the best deal I've ever made."

"You still promised to take him to school and back," Dahl reminded him as he began to move towards the driver's side door.

"Eh," shrugged Lee on the other side of the speeder. "I'd probably have done that anyway. Makes it obvious I still don't want anybody to pick on him."

"Makes sense I guess," acknowledged Dahl as they both opened their doors.

"Plus," added Lee with a grin once he was sitting, "then I can show off the VL to everyone who doesn't show up at parties."

Dahl laughed, Lee's enthusiasm once again catching. "We'd better get going then," he said, flicking the switch to turn on the speeder. “Can’t impress girls without proof that it happened.”

"The one with the braid, right?" asked Lee.

"And the tits," confirmed Dahl, the words _and the smile_ tacking themselves onto the sentence in his head.

"They've all got tits," muttered Lee.

"Yeah," agreed Dahl with a happy sigh, "but most girls don't try to prove they can take off their bra without taking off their shirt and then fuck it up 'cause they're drunk."

Lee sighed deeply, and Dahl laughed.

"What?" asked Dahl. "It's sexy _and_ adorable."

"Sounds like I missed out," said Lee, his tone unfeeling in the way that always meant he was annoyed.

"I promise that was a one off," said Dahl with sympathy. "Most of the parties you missed sucked, and I bet if you talked to her she might give it another go. You're magic."

"I'm a wizard," agreed Lee, and Dahl could hear his grin in the dark.

"... But if you have too much trouble with it, you'll let it go, right?" asked Dahl for the fourth time, his stomach twisting at the thought the same way it had on the first.

"If the timer starts flashing I'll come up," said Lee, "but I've got it, so it's fine."

"Alright," said Dahl - the timer he'd insisted on was at least _something_ of a comfort.

"We can go over it again if you want," said Lee, deeply sympathetic to Dahl's unease and trying to solve it in exactly the wrong way.

"Nah," said Dahl, "we've got it down. Music, maybe?"

"On it," confirmed Lee, and several seconds later he'd chosen the music Dahl had been thinking of - their music tastes weren't _always_ the same, but it was close enough that it didn't matter.

Their conversation became progressively shorter and quieter as they approached their destination, and by the time they were unmooring his boat they were down to speaking only to communicate about the plan. In near silence Lee stripped down to his diving suit, climbing up onto the bow while Dahl shut down the optic camouflage Lee had supplied to hide the boat and soothed its ancient engine to life.

Under normal circumstances Dahl would have given Lee shit for sitting on the cabin’s top by the tip of the bow - but under normal circumstances he wouldn’t be deciding whether to keep the expensive optic camouflage or throw it overboard to hide the evidence, and so today he let Lee sit directly in his sightline. They were going painfully slow anyway, and there wasn’t anything to see in the dark.

Over the last week they’d perfected the heading and the time it took to reach the speeder’s location, letting them leave the all-around light off. It made the trip strange beneath the smaller of the two moons, faint light rippling off the water to outline Lee’s silhouette.

When they arrived Dahl lowered the engine as much as he could without shutting it down and watched the instruments as he lowered the anchor. For a long moment neither of them moved, the hum of the engine overwhelmed by waves lapping against the hull, their breath misting in the cool air under the stars.

They couldn’t have asked for a more perfect night.

Lee shivered and began to move towards the deck proper, prompting Dahl to step out of the wheelhouse to help him with the various cables and rope.

“You alright?” asked Lee before Dahl could get a word out.

“I’m not the one diving,” said Dahl with a laugh. “You?”

“Cold,” said Lee with another shiver and a laugh of his own. His manipulation of the rope was always significantly clumsier than Dahl’s, and it was irritating to watch.

“Better work faster then,” teased Dahl as he lit his flashlight on the lowest setting so that he could check the winch one last time.

Several minutes later they had their setup complete: the rope and chime Lee would use to communicate using tugs, the line that tied his belt to a buoy they’d equipped with a tracker and painted black to disguise it in the dark, and the cables Lee would be taking down with him to ready the speeder for the winch.

“That’s everything,” said Dahl.

Lee took a deep breath that betrayed that even he was nervous, and then lifted his rebreather to the sky like it was a bottle of beer. 

“To freedom,” he announced before bringing the rebreather down to his face, clipping it into place under the goggles, and flipping himself backward off the boat.

The splash made Dahl flinch, leaping across the deck to stare at the water and wait for Lee to come back up. Dahl held his breath. A moment passed. Then another. 

“Lee?” Dahl called as his concern began to turn into panic.

Laughter came from the other side of the boat, and Dahl threw himself across the deck to glare down at Lee. From this angle the moon cast enough light for him to catch Lee’s grin as he half unclipped his rebreather, and Dahl’s glare darkened into a proper scowl.

“Not fucking funny,” he hissed.

“Gimme the cables,” said Lee, clipping the rebreather back in place and ducking under the water.

Dahl groaned out frustration and met Lee back on the first side of the boat. This time Lee didn’t unclip his rebreather at all, communicating with Dahl through hand gestures as they got things set.

“Don’t forget the timer,” Dahl reminded him. 

Lee gave him one last double thumbs up before taking the cables and letting them sink to the bottom, towing him down into the dark far faster than he could have dived under his own power.

This time Lee wasn’t supposed to come back up within seconds, and so the first moments that passed as Dahl stared at where he’d gone down were a slowly building discomfort instead of swiftly building panic.

The water didn’t help, the sound of the waves quieting as time passed and the stillness of the water growing with it, smoothing from darkness broken by the moon to black. 

It brought to mind memories of learning how his uncle Nai had died, the comparison his father had once made between Nai and Lee suddenly far more uncomfortable. It had been six years, and Dahl still didn’t understand how his uncle could have stared off a rig at black water that _had_ to have been significantly rougher than this and still decided to -

“He can see down there,” Dahl reminded himself, pushing away from the edge of the boat and taking a deep, shaky breath. “Imperial class darkvision.”

Saying the words out loud helped with the obvious differences between Nai and Lee, but didn’t do anything to help when the sheer stupidity of what they were doing - of what _Lee_ was doing - really hit him now that he was alone in the dark.

“Imperial _fucking_ class darkvision,” he repeated, his muttering voice sounding huge in the blank expanse around him.

He walked the short space between the centre of the deck towards the wheelhouse. He’d stepped into the warmth before he realized that if he shut the door he wouldn’t be able to hear the chime on the communication rope and groaned; of all the things to miss, of _course_ it would be this.

His compromise was to prop the door open using the heater, directing the heat inwards in the futile hope that it would be strong enough to counter some of the chill. With the breeze having mostly died, it almost worked, and Dahl settled sitting in one of the seats with his hands in front of the heater.

Once upon a time the boat had belonged to his grandfather, and Dahl smiled at the thought of him doing the same as he was. When he’d been a kid he’d been convinced that he’d work out on the water with his grandfather; given that Nai had called the man “a stupid bastard who hit his kids” at the funeral, it was probably for the best that he’d never had the opportunity, but _his_ memories were still fond.

His smile faded as he thought of Lee. Dahl might be equally satisfied with following his grandfather out onto the ocean or following his father into the mechanic shop that he’d inherited from _his_ father, but Lee was just as _dis_ satisfied with both. For a long time Dahl had assumed that Lee would do the same as he was - or, at worst, do similar work one town over like Shan. Then he’d assumed that his father’s suggestion that Lee would leave for the city and come back with a girl was true.

With nothing but the weak light of the heater casting shadows on his hands to accompany him, even that was impossible to believe. Lee was so, so bored with the world around him, desperate for something new, and was willing to do almost anything to get it. Willing to casually commit theft of fucking _Imperial technology_ for the thrill. Willing to dive to the bottom of the ocean in the dead of night to fulfill a bizarre childhood whim. Willing to break whatever rules he had to to make something _change._

Lee wasn’t like him. Not really. They were so close in age and went so many places together so often that people who hadn’t grown up around them still routinely assumed they were twins, and it was never him or Lee that corrected them. That still didn’t mean they wanted the same things or were going to go to the same places.

Dahl took a deep breath as the realization began to properly settle into his bones, sitting back from the heater and rubbing his hands together. When he’d been a little kid and Lee had come to school a year after he had, it had hurt to realize how far ahead he was. It had hurt again - significantly more sharply - when Dahl had aged into the second school at thirteen and the Imperial system hadn’t let Lee skip a grade to go with him, no matter how many times their parents had asked. 

The first year apart Lee had been frustrated with his inability to keep up, putting more effort into school and friends than was really reasonable for a kid; the second had been when his grades didn’t so much slip as fall off a cliff. Knowing that Lee was going to leave and not come back except to visit hurt too, but at least Dahl could reasonably assume that Lee would be _happy_ instead of pacing around the garage or throwing himself at Dahl’s homework instead of his own or going out and finding trouble just to vent.

“He’s gonna be fucking freezing when he gets back,” Dahl muttered to himself just to hear someone’s voice.

The obvious statement pushed Dahl into action, taking two steps down into the cabin to grab the threadbare blankets off the two cramped bunks. He took them with him out onto the deck, setting the heater inside the wheelhouse and shutting the door so that it would be warm when Lee surfaced.

Organizing the blankets so that he was as warm as he could get while still allowing him to jump up at a moment’s notice took more time than he expected, but when he was finished he was actually fairly comfortable. The blankets might be threadbare, but they covered his hands and his jacket was good. 

Being outside was almost nice - the cooler air was clearing his head, and looking at the constellations above was something to focus on. One of the few things he had in common with Shan was knowing about stars; his older brother had helped him learn the constellations, and then they’d grown apart. Dahl had been annoyed when his older brother had moved out, but it was mostly because Shan was the one who was most capable of managing their mother’s moods aside from their father.

He was fairly certain that when he managed to put their mother in a good mood it was mostly luck. Fain was the darling daughter, and could get away with egging her on. Kuo hardly said anything at all, and nothing Lee said could make things better, while anything he said had the potential to make her worse.

Dahl’s eyes came down to study the boards of the deck as he sighed. He couldn’t blame Lee for antagonizing their mother given how fucking _arbitrary_ her specific dislike of him was, but that didn’t make it less difficult to deal with. If nothing else taking Lee’s side meant he was routinely caught in the crossfire.

His grip on the blankets loosened as another realization rolled in, his father’s comparison of Lee to Nai suddenly once again relevant. The only time their father mentioned Nai was when he’d had a drink or two in the shop after work, vague references to stories about his best friend that were never finished. 

_Sometimes,_ his father had said, _I feel like I’m looking at a ghost._

Dahl’s fingers were starting to tingle in the cold, and he checked the timer he’d synced with Lee’s so that he didn’t have to think about whether or not to tell Lee that their mother hated him because she missed her brother.

He heaved a sigh; about half the time was up, which was _nearly_ as much time as he’d hoped for, but significantly more than he was comfortable with.

More to distract from the anxiety than to make himself more comfortable, he began to reorganize his blankets, and by the time he was finished, the moon was starting to slip behind a cloud. He sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his wrist. He should have brought gloves. 

If this kept up, he was going to have to massage the story a little bit if he was going to impress the girl with pretty hair - diving down to the speeder was interesting and exciting. Waiting in a boat for forty minutes while staring at the deck boards’ slow fade from his vision decidedly wasn’t. 

Dahl’s hand paused mid air in front of his face, his eyes focused on nothing. That was how it always went, when he was around. Lee did something stupid and exciting and dangerous, and Dahl helped him stick the landing.

“Am I…” Dahl murmured so quietly it could barely be heard outside his head, “am I Lee’s sidekick?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Am I Lee’s sidekick?” Dahl softly asked aloud as though the deck boards might answer.

The sound of rumbling Imperial engines reached his ears before the pinprick light crossed into his vision, and Dahl froze, wasting two full seconds staring. Technically they’d planned for this, but _it wasn’t supposed to happen_.

Dahl leapt to his feet, discarding the blankets and bounding for the wheelhouse on feet kept as light as he could to prevent the sound from echoing across still water. He adjusted instruments by feel instead of risking a light, setting the engines to warm and the anchor to rise before throwing himself back out onto the deck.

Technically the line with the chimes was as much a way for Dahl to communicate a mistake to Lee as it was for Lee to communicate a success, but _this wasn’t supposed to happen_. This exact situation was the point of Lee having a buoy as well as a line to the boat, but _this wasn’t supposed to happen_. Lee would know what a slack line meant; this contingency plan had been Dahl’s idea, and he’d hammered it into Lee until his brother could repeat it before Dahl had even started to say the words, but it _still wasn’t supposed to happen_.

“He knows to stay under,” Dahl mouthed silently as he gripped the chimes to muffle their sound, his other hand pulling his work knife out of his pocket and flipping the blade out of the handle. “He knows.”

The line was weighted enough to sink when the knife sliced through, and Dahl took the chimes with him to the wheelhouse. Looking over ranged sensors made it clear that he was right to move as soon as the Imperial patrol speeder had hit his ears and eyes; their anti-grav might be more dangerous than a proper boat in bad weather, but on a night like tonight, they could travel at full speed.

With the anchor up and the engines humming instead of complaining, Dahl eased the boat away from its position before he could think twice about leaving Lee on the bottom of the ocean. If he thought twice he would remember how dark it must be even with the darkvision goggles, that Lee’s rebreather was well maintained but still shitty, that if it were _him_ that had felt the line go slack, he’d panic.

Dahl pressed up the speed while he was still far enough away that he was fairly certain that the Imperials wouldn’t be able to hear his boat over the sound of their anti-grav and wake. Aiming to get as close to the cliffs as he could was the plan; the optic camouflage had trouble imitating water.

When they’d been making the plan he’d been able to see in Lee’s eyes every time they were breaking another law, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to count them himself. Now all he could think about was _just how many things_ the Imperials would be able to charge them with.

With the Imperials growing nearer Dahl quieted the engines, turned on the optic camouflage, and held his breath. Hopefully he was close enough to the cliffs to avoid being spotted. Hopefully they wouldn’t catch him. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to choose between telling them where Lee was and risk them taking him to _Darth fucking Vader_ or leaving Lee underwater and at risk of succumbing to cold or exhaustion and drowning.

“It’s going to be fine,” Dahl murmured in the silence of the wheelhouse as he watched the Imperial speeder approach through the glitter of the optic camouflage. “We planned for this. Nobody’s going to line you up against a wall and shoot you. Not gonna happen.”

He took a deep breath, drummed his fingers on the dashboard, and chose not to say what might happen to Lee out loud.

The Imperials slowed as they approached the spot where Dahl’s boat had been anchored. On the one hand he was thankful that they weren’t aiming their lights at the water - they might have spotted the buoy if they had - but on the other, their spotlights sweeping the cliffs meant that he was relying exclusively on the optic camouflage to protect him.

Hopefully the optic camouflage stolen from them would be enough to fool their other equipment.

The spotlight passed over his camouflage once, and he shifted back and forth on his feet - twice, and he swallowed hard - three times, he was feeling lightheaded - as the speeder slowly, slowly passed him by.

Passed him by and carried on, not speeding up until they were almost a full klik away.

“Shit,” hissed Dahl as his brain kicked back into gear. He had no idea why the Imperials knew to change their schedule, but he _did_ know who else might be caught out - he’d heard rumors that Ee-bee was passing information to the local rebel cell.

He fumbled for the microphone, doing his best to tune it to every local line he could think of that would be too low-tech for Imperials to bother monitoring. He paused before speaking into the mic, chewing on his lip as he tried to think of some way of disguising himself _just in case._

The people on planet who weren’t Imperial sellouts still spoke the native language as much as possible, and most of the Imperials were from elsewhere in the galaxy. Quite a few had fraternized enough to be fluent; some could even hear through the local rural drag.

Dahl cleared his throat and did his best imitation of his grandpa, a man who had hardly been able to speak three lines of Basic and whose last words had only been intelligible to Nai. 

“Hey hail,” he said into the mic, pausing to listen to the static. “Anyone’s out there, if you might be dumb as sin on the water, bucket head’s’ve changed rounds.” Another pause, and more static. Dahl swallowed, then coughed into the mic to add to the effect before glancing at his instruments and stating coordinates and direction.

For several minutes Dahl left the lines open, static softly thrumming as he watched the light of the Imperial speeder flicker past the horizon.

With the Imperials beyond his sight, Dahl half-sighed, unable to quite let go of the fear. He hesitated when he looked down at the controls, and decided to leave the lines open while he drove the boat back to Lee. There wasn't anything he could do if the rebel cell was out there, much less anything he could do to help if that's what they needed, but...

Thirty seconds into his ride he heard something on the line - three beeps and a trill. He didn't know a word of Binary, but he could recognize Ee-Bee's broken chime just fine, and the droid didn't sound in any way upset. Dahl let himself smile before breathing out relief and closing the lines. 

He wasn't going to have to massage this story in the slightest.

When he arrived back at the buoy he slowed but didn't stop, directing the boat just a little further out so that he could lower the anchor with some extra length on the chain. Then he let the water drift the boat back towards the buoy, letting out chain until he heard the buoy knock against the side of the boat.

He was still tense when he stepped out onto the deck, lifting one of the spare coils of rope and clipping one end to the line of the buoy, letting it spool out through his hands as the weighted clip sank down to where Lee would hopefully - definitely, definitely, definitely - catch it. When the rope stopped unspooling, he reattached the chimes and tied the end to one of the cleats along the edge of the boat.

Several seconds later the chimes started to gently jingle. Dahl groaned deep and leaned both hands on the edge of the boat in his relief. Three jingles in quick succession meant "I've got it set, lower the cable", and Lee kept pausing and repeating the three pulls. It also meant that Lee was still alive - they’d done some _stupid shit_ , but Dahl didn’t intend to do anything quite this stupid again.

"Be _patient_ ," Dahl muttered with a shake of his head as he grinned and moved to the winch.

He winced when the engine started, the Imperial patrol heavy on his mind - if this story didn't impress that girl, he didn't know what would. 

Lee only stopped repeating his pattern of three jingles when he presumably received the hook on the end of the heavy winch chain. If Dahl hadn't spent the last hour-and-change silent and alone, he'd have found it grating. Instead the near minute of silence while Lee dealt with his end of the chain was intolerable, and he found himself almost missing the obnoxious jingle.

When Lee was finished he didn't just ring the chimes twice like he was supposed to, but also yanked on the buoy so that it bobbed and splashed in the water. Dahl jumped at the splash, then laughed as he pressed the button on the winch to set it lifting; even from the bottom of the ocean Lee managed to express his triumph.

It was several full minutes of the boat creaking and the winch’s engine bitching before Lee appeared - first his hand holding the chain, then his head, his other hand rising from the water to unclip his rebreather and push his goggles to his forehead so that Dahl could see his grin. Dahl grinned back, not quite managing to stifle his first laugh when Lee put a hand on his hip to pose as the winch continued lifting the speeder with him standing on top.

“Feeling good about yourself?” asked Dahl, leaning against the winch with his arms crossed in opposition to Lee’s pose.

“Never better,” declared Lee, jumping off the speeder and onto the deck just before Dahl pushed the button on the winch to stop it lifting.

Lee pulled back the hood of his diving suit the second he landed, first shaking water off his arms and then vigorously out of his hair with both hands. Dahl yelped with his palm against the button as he was sprayed, the sound echoing out across the water in a way that made his stomach drop.

“Can’t take a little water?” asked Lee, flicking his fingers and a few more drops of water at Dahl.

Dahl responded by shoving him over the side of the boat and back into the ocean, revelling too much in Lee’s yell and splash to worry about the noise they were making.

“What was that for?” asked Lee once he was done sputtering, glaring up from where he was treading water. 

“We’re not done,” Dahl pointed out. “It’ll be easier to get this thing trussed if you’re down there.”

Lee scoffed but didn’t argue, swimming to the speeder still three quarters in the water. 

Their movements as they tied down the speeder were just as efficient as they had been before Lee’s dive, but their conversation was even more fast and light than usual as they rode high on the adrenaline of their success. It wasn’t long before the speeder was in an ideal position to be towed, and this time when Lee was climbing on to the boat Dahl was prepared. 

He threw a towel at Lee from the door of the wheelhouse, catching him full in the face before ducking into the wheelhouse and out of Lee’s water spray range. He grinned to himself as he listened to Lee curse, deciding to focus on getting the boat moving like he hadn’t done anything rather than watch.

“Hey,” he started half a minute later, turning to talk to Lee about the next step of the plan and jerking back around when he caught sight of Lee starting to take off his diving suit. “You… gonna shut the door?” 

“Why?” asked Lee, the sound of his bare feet hitting the deck making it to Dahl’s ears. “You gonna look?”

“I mean no,” said Dahl, biting back the observation that nothing could have changed _that_ much since they’d shared a room less than eight months ago. “It’s just… cold out there.”

“Oh, you meant I should be on _your_ side of the door,” teased Lee, shivering violently halfway through his sentence.

“Fuck off,” snapped Dahl, scowling down at the boat’s controls. The one time he’d quit sex halfway through, the girl he’d been fucking had been drunk enough that she’d started going on about how much she liked _twins_ , and they’d studiously avoided each other at parties ever since.

Lee laughed, stepping into the wheelhouse far sooner than Dahl expected. Glancing around informed Dahl that Lee’d picked up all the blankets that Dahl had abandoned on the deck and wrapped himself in them still damp.

“It’s fucking cold in here,” said Lee with a shudder, rubbing his upper arms with hands holding the blankets close. “Why’s it so fucking cold in here?”

“Sorry,” replied Dahl, his annoyance briefly fading as he remembered he’d left the door hanging open ever since the Imperials had approached and then roaring back in when he realized that Lee hadn’t dressed under the blankets and was getting them wet. “Heater’s over there.”

Lee nodded in response to Dahl’s gesture, leaving damp footprints on the floor as he stepped to the corner and the heater. He organized himself on the floor directly in front of the heater, draping one of the blankets over his head and then opening the front of his cocoon so that the heat could dry him off directly.

Dahl rolled his eyes and focused on navigating, the tow of the speeder altering the way the boat moved enough that Dahl couldn’t act on autopilot. The moment of quiet made the sound of Lee shivering all the louder; he was prone to dramatics, but not the kind that made him seem more pathetic than he was, and so Dahl tapped the dashboard with his knuckles.

They _really_ should have found a third person to wait by the shore just in case.

“So,” he said, voice just loud enough to be heard over the engine and eyes still on the approaching cliffs, “if I had been caught by the Imperials…”

“You weren’t,” said Lee from underneath his blanket, stating the words like they were the end of the conversation.

“But if I had been,” Dahl continued with his stomach sinking as the sheer stupidity of what they’d done once again hit him, “would someone have come looking for you?”

“Kuo knew,” said Lee, and Dahl glanced over his shoulder to see Lee’s shoulders shrug beneath the blankets.

“He wasn’t supposed to,” countered Dahl, images of Kuo and their father searching the shoreline days later and finding nothing filling his head.

“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?” asked Lee, the words far more confused than suspicious.

“Only that you and I were doing something stupid,” admitted Dahl, smiling when Lee laughed and then sneezed. “Did you?”

“Nope,” said Lee. “Nobody even knows I’m with you, unless you told them.”

“You know people just assume we’re always in the same place, right?” Dahl pointed out, shoving down the urge to keep harassing Lee about how he might have _died_. The best Dahl could do was vow to talk Lee out of doing anything this fucking stupid again.

“Or that I’m with a girl,” said Lee, his voice light.

Dahl laughed - those were the two most reasonable assumptions for him, too - and laughed again when he caught Lee muttering something about the assumption being _convenient_. 

They stopped several klicks out from town to wait until the Imperial curfew was lifted; they spent the first half of the wait with Lee huddled next to the heater, and once he’d dressed, he joined Dahl by the front window to watch for the planet’s star to touch the skyline. Almost all of their conversation was focused on the speeder - Lee had _plans_ , and now that they actually had the speeder in their possession, Dahl wanted to hear them.

It was cold enough outside when they once again started moving that Lee stayed in the wheelhouse, giving Dahl the full force of his shit eating grin when they passed the Stormtroopers stationed at the edge of their home town’s bay to watch the morning traffic. Dahl’s responding smile was real but tense; they might have enough plausible deniability to keep Imperials from bothering to follow up, but it was a blessing that they were in the wheelhouse. Lee’s expression _begged_ for investigation.

As they approached the docks proper the tone of Lee’s grin changed to excitement, stepping out of the wheelhouse to shout at a person on the boardwalk. Dahl sighed out annoyance as Lee climbed up onto the bow and into his sightline, laughing when Lee tried to jump to the dock and almost didn’t make it.

Lee waved the man he’d shouted at over, but focused on helping Dahl with the boat, waiting until it was tied down and Dahl was stepping from the boat onto the dock before turning to his friend. Dahl frowned as he took the man in, his high spirits souring. He was older than they were - older than Shan, an adult in his twenties that Lee had no legitimate reason to know. If Dahl were to guess, he’d say that the man was from the city; that was the only place he’d ever seen men with bleached hair and pierced ears, and nobody local looked at his boat with so much disdain.

"Cio!" said Lee, his grin back in place. "I didn't think you'd be on time!"

"Just shows how curious you've got me," replied Cio with an indulgent smile.

Lee looked past Cio at the other people still on the boardwalk, and Dahl followed his gaze to find the group of old men affectionately referred to by his father as the “shit caf club” _standing_ with their caf in hand instead of sitting. They were eyeing Dahl and the others on the dock, judging them just as much as they usually judged the boats.

"Well," said Cio with a laugh when Lee looked back at him and crossed his arms, "and grandpa got me up."

"City people," Dahl muttered to himself. He glanced back at the old men on the boardwalk; he knew one of them used to collect protection money from his dad, but he wasn't sure which. 

"I really am curious though,” said Cio, stepping past Dahl without acknowledging him in the slightest. He strode down the dock to the end of the boat, looking down at the speeder still mostly underwater. “Is that a speeder?”

“Yeah,” replied Lee, following Cio along the dock. He started to speak and then changed what he was going to say, eyes catching on something along Cio’s sleeve. He turned to Cio and grinned, his hands raised slightly like it took effort to keep them to himself. “It’s finished!”

“Shit, right,” said Cio, smiling and lifting his arm, rolling his sleeve up further so that his forearm was bared, offering it out for Lee to see. “You haven’t seen it yet.”

Lee did one better, hands catching onto Cio’s arm to twist it around, getting a good look at the entire tattoo. His inspection was thorough, fingers following the designs all up Cio’s arm as he took in the details of the art - and the blatantly obvious symbol of the Shi clan emblazoned across the entirety of Cio’s inner arm. Dahl took a deep breath in between his teeth; he’d known that Lee was getting involved with members of the Shi clan, but there was a difference between members and members who got _tattooed_.

“Not thinking about getting one, are you?” asked Dahl as he joined them - Lee was already friends with Cio, but he couldn’t help but feel defensive. Not to mention he wasn’t going to be left entirely out of a conversation that would inevitably turn back towards the speeder and the success he’d been a part of.

“Nah,” said Lee, eyes still on Cio’s arm. “They’re kinda gaudy.”

Cio laughed, then yelped when Lee touched the inside of his elbow to start pushing his sleeve further up. He jerked his arm away with a curse, and Lee let go.

“Just had to check that there wasn’t anything new,” he explained, palms in the air to express mocking submission.

“Almost forgot what a ballsy little shit you are,” said Cio, eyes narrowed as the old men on the boardwalk laughed at his expense. Something about the expression left Dahl uneasy, but Lee hardly seemed to notice.

“Aw,” said Lee with a smirk. “You missed me.”

“Not sure I’d go that far,” replied Cio - but the shameless response earned Lee another smile. “But I did kinda wonder if we’d scared you clean.”

“Not likely,” observed Dahl, and for the first time, he wished the probation _had_ done something to permanently change Lee’s behaviour. 

Lee shot him a confused look so brief that Cio didn’t seem to catch it.

“Definitely not,” said Lee, another smile directed at Cio.

“Good,” replied Cio, arms crossed. “‘cause I’ve got some thoughts on how you can pay back this favour.”

“Can’t say I owe you much just yet,” said Lee, gesturing down at the speeder and mirroring Cio’s arms.

There was a pause as Cio considered, and for several seconds, Dahl felt almost as tense as he had when he was watching the Imperial ship pass him by.

Cio snorted and laughed, and all of Dahl’s muscles released at once. 

“Fair enough,” he said with a smile. He waved a hand in the general direction of the speeder in the same moment he started to walk back towards his grandfather and the other men. “Let’s get this thing out of the water, I want to see what you went to all this effort for.”

The process of getting the speeder out of the water was significantly faster than Dahl had expected; where any of the friends _he_ could have asked for help would be using old equipment with chains or, at best, faulty ancient anti-grav, Cio and his grandfather had _money_. Cio came with a trailer that was used for shipping-with-a-wink, and his grandfather brought a “companion” droid that could do the lifting of at least four men with ease.

Watching the speeder rise out of the water and be deposited on the trailer massively improved Dahl’s mood; it wasn’t just the shit caf club who was watching, and the story was going to be spread through town by noon. 

The speeder itself seemed to be alright at first glance, the paint stripped away but the shell still solid, an older model with rounded edges that seemed like it might have been imported all the way from the Core. Cio made the mistake of suggesting to Lee that he might not get it running, and was treated to a non-stop stream of explanations and theories about how to fix it that lasted right up until they were in Cio’s speeder pulling the trailer home. It was a miracle that Lee didn’t insist on opening up the hood right there on the boardwalk.

Dahl didn’t object when Lee assumed that he was alright with sitting in the back seat. He had a party to plan to celebrate their success out on the same beach where they’d left his speeder parked.

Once home they deposited the speeder into the back shed where it would live until they had their father’s approval to move it into the garage. Now Lee did insist on opening the hood, him, Dahl, and Cio staring at it for a long moment in silence before Lee pronounced that he would have it running in two weeks. 

Cio laughed, the two made a bet, and Dahl sighed to himself before insisting on defining “running” before there was any conflict over winners and losers. Thankfully Cio was an idiot, and agreed to define “running” as “will turn on, at all, for any length of time”.

Then Lee gave Dahl a meaningful look, and after several seconds of confusion, Dahl muttered a resentful good bye, leaving Lee and Cio to their sorting of favours. He couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to know; either way he wasn’t about to eavesdrop on Shi clan business, even if it involved his brother.

He was cautious entering the house, listening for their mother despite the fact that she was supposed to be out of the house at her current job. The house was silent, their mother gone, Kuo and Fain at school, and -

Dahl checked the time, then sighed and sagged against the wall. He was late for work - very late for work - and _exhausted_ , and an idiot for not thinking of this far ahead.

After a pause to think it over - his father was going to have heard the story by the end of the day - he sent his father a message: _Sorry. Had a really long night. Gonna sleep it off. Won’t do it again._

By the time he was finished he could hear Lee coming up the back porch, and waited in the hall for him to come in the back door.

“Mom’s gone,” he said at a normal volume the second Lee was through the door. “Got your trade all worked out?”

“Yeah,” said Lee, relaxing significantly when Dahl spoke. 

For a long moment they just stared at each other, the adrenaline worn entirely down, Lee deciding not to tell Dahl any details and Dahl deciding not to ask.

“We pulled it off,” said Lee, a grin spreading across his face. 

“We did,” agreed Dahl, smiling back, Cio and the Shi clan and their parents fading into the background as they both basked in their success.

“So,” said Lee, stretching his arms over his head and pausing to sigh. “I guess we just… go to bed.”

“I guess so,” agreed Dahl - the entire thing already felt far away, but it simultaneously felt bizarre that it would end.

Together they walked down the hall, both once again pausing outside Dahl’s door.

“... Good night,” said Lee after a pause, doing his best to hide his discomfort but too tired to quite manage it.

“Good night,” echoed Dahl with a half hearted smile, stepping into his room and shutting the door as Lee finished the walk down the hall to his room.

It was painfully quiet as Dahl changed into sleep clothes, quieter than the near-silence of the boat, no lapping water, just a ringing in his ears that only grew louder when he lay himself down. Lee was deep under water. It must have been quiet down there, too. He looked over at the window where the thick curtain was keeping out most of the light; the slivers around the top edge doing nothing to illuminate the room.

Two minutes later he was throwing off the blankets, stepping out into the hall and walking towards Lee’s room. Lee heard him coming, and had his door open so fast that it was obvious that he hadn’t been sleeping either.

There was a long moment of silence as they both did their best to avoid admitting weakness first.

“Just… needed to hear me breathing, huh?” suggested Lee, his laugh weak and his teasing half hearted.

“I just thought that maybe if you were tense…” Dahl shrugged and glanced at the floor as he trailed off.

“I could come take the top bunk,” said Lee, carefully phrasing it to be about Dahl instead of himself. “If you really need the company.”

“I mean,” said Dahl, “only if it would make you feel better.”

Lee swallowed. Dahl rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. Lee nodded. Dahl breathed a sigh of relief. Neither of them made fun of the other as they went back to Dahl’s room and settled in.

It really _was_ a relief to be able to hear him breathing. Maybe tripping-Lee had been on to something.

“Lee,” said Dahl softly ten minutes later. 

“Yeah?” asked Lee, his voice just as quiet despite the fact that the house was empty except for them.

“You really could have died,” said Dahl - half dozing in the dark and quiet, comforted by Lee’s breathing, knowing his brother was there, he couldn’t help but mention it. 

“Dying didn’t feel like drowning,” whispered Lee, the words soft and hard to hear but spoken with so much certainty that Dahl felt ill.

Dahl took a deep breath, held it, let it out. His brother still believed his vision was real, and there was absolutely nothing that Dahl could do to convince him otherwise. It wasn’t like _he_ had magic Jedi powers.

For a moment Dahl tried to think of something to say, but half asleep with no way to change Lee’s mind, his thoughts swiftly drifted away. Toward the girl and her pretty hair, the flash of a nipple when she fucked up taking off her bra without taking off her shirt, the way she giggled when her friend tugged it back down, the way her pants hung low on her hips...


	4. Epilogue

Lee woke slowly to the sound of waves, his earbuds still in but the music long since gone silent. 

He shifted under the blanket, pulling his socked feet up into the warmth as he pulled out his earbuds and let them fall to the floor of the speeder. _His_ speeder, which had put a crick in his neck overnight and was slightly too cold and still smelled a little like brine and had let him wake up _relaxed_ for the third morning in a row. 

No complaining friends or acquaintances when he was on their couch slightly too long. No tense anxiety waiting for his mother’s shouting. No hard cot in the bed of an open trailer next to strangers the morning after a party with a hangover. No irrational sense of abandonment at knowing that Dahl was already gone to work.

Just him, the waves, and his speeder.

Twenty minutes later he sighed deeply and pushed himself up despite his warm almost-comfort. He might be a little more free, but he’d promised Kuo that he’d take him to school, and _he_ still needed to go just enough to satisfy his father and the probation officer.

It was swiftly becoming routine to take his pillow and blanket with him - he’d need a thicker one soon - tugging on the handle that popped the trunk before he opened the door. Then he reached for his shoes under the seat, tossing them to the gravel of the shitty public beach parking lot so that he could step into them when he stood. 

Maneuvering so that the blanket wouldn’t drag in the dirt was getting easier with practice, but he still got dust on it when he lifted the trunk’s top. The satisfaction of looking into the trunk at the most important things he owned made it all worth it.

The blanket and pillow went in, and after looking around at the brush and trees and rut filled gravel road, he decided that if he was fast, he could risk changing out of his sleep clothes outside. It was _cold_ in the breeze, and still worth it.

Then he pulled a nutrient bar and a can of flavoured caf out of their boxes for his third breakfast in a row, shutting the lid and wandering to the front of the speeder to sit on the hood. Eating a nutrient bar while staring out at the ocean and shivering despite his jacket wasn’t his favourite way to start the day, but it was _still worth it_.

Just him, his caf, and a little bit of freedom.


End file.
